The Scorch Trials: Expectations and Actual Storyline

After reading The Maze Runner, I completely feel in love with the book and the characters that I think it's best to say that this is one of the best fiction story i've ever read, it was a very well-written story by James Dashner, which I have wrote a book review on it which you guys can read it here, and what I love most about it is that every chapter brings a brilliant twist that it makes us wander what will happen in the next chapter.

So I began reading The Scorch Trials soon after I finished reading The Maze Runner, the ending of the book one was somewhat of a cliffhanger as it ended with Thomas and the gang escaping from WICKED and being rescued by strangers that warned them about the Flare that has spread throughout parts of the world.

WARNING: Spoiler alert!

Now i'm gonna stop there but let's get right down to business, The Gladers are then gathered in an abandoned building that was safe enough to keep them away from the Cranks. But Teresa was separated into a different room with the exception that she was a female. Thomas thought that he could finally rest after what he has gone through but things started to get more gruelling, he suddenly could not telepath with Teresa and by the time he checked on her, she was gone. Oddly, there is a note in front of Teresa's room that was marked with a name of a boy, Aris.

Tuning to fast forward after all of the shock moments of the gang when they discovered they're all been plastered with tattoos of codes at their backs, Aris mentioned that he came from a maze with dozens of girls inside of it, and they were called Group B. Hearing that, The Gladers realised that they were not the only one that was put to the test. The difference was, while Teresa was the only girl in the Glade, Aris was the only boy who was stuck with dozens of girls inside the maze.

Ok now let's get straight into what I want to comment about the storyline! When I first heard that there were two teams, I was excited because i thought that we would be introduced to a bunch of new characters from group B and they were gonna mingle with the Gladers and there would be shippings amongst them, especially Minho! Oh gosh, he is such a flirt! and a smooth one too, it would be nice for him to be paired up with someone and for a change, the story could not only focus on Thomas & Teresa or Thomas & Brenda.

But when I read it, i'm not saying i'm disappointed because at one point, there were a couple of female characters that were introduced, two of them were Harriet and Sonya, who were co-leaders of Group B and they were the ones who interacted the most with Teresa so both of them got respectable lines compared to the other girls. But I kept wondering on what about the other girls? There were a number of characters from the Gladers that got a decent amount of lines in the novel and a part of me wished that Group B and the Gladers would interact more.

When I got to the past where Ratman appeared in one of the chapters, I thought that it would be somewhat of a race between Group B and the Gladers, fighting to make it until a safer area and we as readers would get corny romantic scenes between the male and the female groups, because yeah I gotta admit i'm a sucker for those. But in reality, it was more of the Gladers fighting for their lives as they barge into the scorch with trials that almost wiped their bodies.

I would also like to point out how confusing Teresa's state of mind is. Once I read that Teresa and Aris was working together under Wicked and they both knew what Wicked's plan was, what was her real feelings towards Thomas? A part of me wished that they would end up together but Brenda seemed more genuine than Teresa but overall I just thought Thomas fitted better with Teresa.

All and all I would give The Scorch Trials a 8 over 10 points because even though I was kind of slightly disappointed with the very little amount of segments from Group B, the plotline for the trilogy is amazing and the storyline was very well executed. I have to say though that The Maze Runner; which is the first book, if my favourite out of the three books, The Scorch Trials was not a flop and Thomas is such a strong and independent character that I believe young children can look up to him as an inspiration.

xoxo,

Gia